[Excess blood volume in the brain in the presence of edema].

Edema of the brain was induced by repeated venous stasis within the skull in rabbit experiments on a "chest--head" preparation. Changes in general venous pressure (reflecting venous pressure in the brain) and in the volume of blood in the brain were continuously recorded. The dependence graphs of these parameters show that during the development of cerebral edema there is a regular tendency towards an increase in the volume of blood in the cerebral vessels, which should be conducive to intensified filtration of water from the blood into the cerebral tissue. The increase in the cerebral blood volume, in the capillaries and veins in the first place, evidently depends on the changes in the deformability of the cerebral tissue. The active decrease in the volume of blood in the brain possibly compensates for the changes which lead to the development of cerebral edema. At the same time it was established that the increase in the cerebral blood volume may in turn be compensated by active removal of water from the cerebral tissue into the blood.